Charu’s Story – Why our CEO Started Continuwell

Our CEO, Charu Raheja, PhD, knows first-hand that an unexpected illness can arise at any time. It was during a vacation in Miami, when Charu started experiencing a severe headache. She never would have guessed that her headache was actually a side effect of a potentially fatal brain bleed caused by an arteriovenous malformation (AVM).

Though Charu thought her headache was not serious, her husband was concerned and called her on-call nurse service. Using the same telehealth guidelines that Continuwell nurses use, her nurse evaluated her symptoms and told her to go to the ER. Charu was having a stroke!

That telehealth nurse may have saved her life. All it takes is a quick conversation with a Continuwell nurse to determine if you need to seek emergency care right away, or if you can treat yourself at home. However, one of the biggest challenges for telehealth is to get people to actually make the call. First, calling a doctor costs money. Second, people are intimated to call when they are not sure if they need a doctor.

That is where Continuwell comes in. We provide a 24/7 nurse-first model. Our nurses are trained by doctors, they use protocols written by doctors, and they use them to evaluate callers’ symptoms to determine the level of care needed. The nurse does everything a telephone doctor would do 3 out 4 times. The nurses are free and the monthly cost to the employer is the same or less than what tghey are paying with another doctor-only telemedicine company.

Fortunately, Charu received the necessary treatment and recovered well. Her experience strengthened our mission to provide more people with accessible healthcare. When illness strikes, we believe that everyone should have easy access to speak with a nurse, in order to ask questions and clarify health concerns.

Here is the story of our CEO’s journey from the beginning of her symptoms during a family vacation, to surgery back home, and her amazing recovery back to functionality. Now, she leads a support group for those who have suffered strokes, in the hopes of bringing awareness to others so they too can have a positive outcome.